Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Rambling Thoughts

This morning, I had a conversation with a woman who volunteers with my agency and is also working on completing her college degree. She is preparing a research project for a women's history course on illegitimacy. But, in her work, is finding lots of research about sex and women throughout American history. She says that she is finding that through the generations, women have usually viewed sex as an obligation or as something forced upon them by their husbands. There was no acknowledgement that women could or should enjoy sex or own their sexuality. In fact, if a woman did enjoy sex, she was seen as a witch or as having the devil in her.

Which got me thinking -- if this is the historical view towards sex for women as a whole (not individual women - I'm sure, from talking to my grandmother, that individual couples enjoyed sex), then it's actually pretty amazing that we have come to a point in human development that we are so organized to fight against hurtful, forced sex. It was in my life time, less than 40 years ago, that the first rape crisis centers organized over the public acknowledgement that rape is a problem for women and rape is bad. And, now, most communities either have or border on a community with sexual assault victim and prevention services.

It's amazing that we have come to a point where we don't just whisper amongst ourselves about the pain and shame of rape - but rather can work across many professions to reshape prevention as an activity designed to change men's and society's attitudes about rape and relationships and sex.

Maybe we should take a moment to appreciate how much we have done already -- before rolling up our sleeves to jump back in, eh?

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